


searching through reflections for your outline

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Series: 15 days of fatt 2021 [2]
Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: 15 Days of FatT, 15 Days of FatT 2021, Canon Compliant, F/F, PARTIZAN Spoilers, friends with benefits to exes to ???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29914209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: While overlooking the battle alongside the person who had once been her old friend and rival, Gucci reflectsOR,“Must you hover,” said Clem, or rather, said the Witch in Glass, tapping at the tablet she was holding with unnecessary force, and Gucci sighed because she sounded so much like Clem as Gucci had known her, the same snappish petulance. “You sound like my mother, sighing like that.”
Relationships: Gucci Garantine/Clementine Kesh
Series: 15 days of fatt 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195682
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	searching through reflections for your outline

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "reflection" for 15 Days of Friends at the Table 2021
> 
> Spoilers up to and including the Partizan finale

“Must you _hover_ ,” said Clem, or rather, said the Witch in Glass, tapping at the tablet she was holding with unnecessary force, and Gucci sighed because she sounded so much like Clem as Gucci had known her, the same snappish petulance. “You sound like my mother, sighing like that.”

Gucci considered rising to the bait and trying to argue that she was nothing like Crysanth Kesh despite having briefly occupied her seat of power, and then she considered walking away, conceding the point and letting the Witch be infuriating by herself, and then she didn’t do either. She didn’t have anywhere else to be, not when everyone else had their parts to play, and her part was here, overseeing it all from the corpse of a Divine resurrected by the power of the Adversary. Part of her missed being back on the frontlines in the Transgress Oblige, beam partisans flashing, gunfire echoing in her ears, with the immediacy of combat singing in her nerves and sharpening her senses. More of her was satisfied with her new position of authority, her responsibility to oversee everything from the bridge of a ship positioned just outside the line of fire.

She liked the big picture, and she liked to be able to see how she had shaped it. While having a secret identity had been fun, in a childish play-acting sort of way, she liked to receive credit for her work. It may have still been dark out, but it was time for her to step out of the shadows.

So yes, she was glad for her new role as one of the main leaders of Millennium Break, even with the infighting and dissension that still plagued her, even with everything she’d given up to stand here. But right now, she would’ve given up all of her authority and influence just to be back in her mech, actively risking her life with her hands cramping as she gripped the controls, just to have something to do other than trade insults with whatever remained of Clementine Kesh.

“Letting me get the last word?” said the Witch. “That’s not like you.”

“And how would you know what I’m like?” said Gucci. “You didn’t even know that I was the one who had been foiling your plans for months, and since Clem is dead I don’t know who you are anymore.”

“You haven’t been paying attention to everything I’ve done?” said the Witch. “That’s not like you, to ignore such an important player. And I haven’t exactly been subtle.”

“No, subtlety never was your style,” said Gucci, automatically, thinking about the increasingly outrageous stunts Clem pulled when she didn’t get her way at school. Or her single-minded insistence that there ought to be a throne in Cruciat when the dust settled specifically so she could sit in it. The throne, that is. Not the dust. Clementine Kesh did not sit in dust. She complained until someone cleaned it up, or, failing that, went through all of the effort of dragging in a rug from another room in the palace up several flights of stairs rather than doing a bit of sweeping. Gucci rather thought this metaphor was getting away from her, but the point still stood. Clem had never been one for tact, and clearly that, at least, was still the same, if the giant floating fortress she’d made in the shimmering rebuilt body of Past was anything to go by.

“I thought you said we didn’t know each other,” said the Witch, smugly.

“Hmph,” said Gucci, pursing her lips, because she didn’t have a good response to that.

“Personally,” the Witch continued, “I think my style is impeccable.”

“Not that it matters, if you don’t have the substance to back it up,” said Gucci.

“No substance, huh?” the Witch said, spreading her arms grandly, gesturing at the gleaming surfaces of the Reflecting Pool, the places where the crystalline structure of Past had been reinforced with sprigs of sage sprouting through every crack. “How’s this for substance?” And Gucci was forced to admit that she kind of had a point. The reconstruction of the body of Past was an impressive feat, taking it from a scavenged husk to a fully operational and space-worthy floating city capable of housing a large refugee population within the year.

Clem, as Gucci had known her, would not have been able to do such a thing. The Clem that Gucci had known, who had once thrown a tantrum because she only got the third best grade on an exam and sulked all afternoon and evening when Quincey Calibration showed up to the graduation ball in a dress two shades off from Clem’s, upstaging her completely, to hear Clem tell it. Gucci thought that Clem wore it better, but Clem hadn’t wanted to hear it, and had instead tearfully shouted at her about how she’d danced with Quincey anyway, so clearly she didn’t think that Clem looked _that_ good. This was months after they’d kissed for the first time—while watching the sunrise from the fire escape of their dormitory, overlooking the lake set ablaze by the dawn, because Gucci had an important interview that day and couldn’t sleep, and she’d gotten the internship but all she could remember of that day was the feel of Clem’s lips on hers—but before they’d decided to date, or even kissed a second time. Not that they'd ever officially decided to date. They'd always found ways to be too busy to have that particular conversation. Gucci briefly wondered about their old classmate and where she’d ended up. Probably nowhere near as exciting as here, and if the circumstances had been just a little bit different, she and Clem side-by-side overlooking a battle and commanding their combined forces would’ve sounded like a dream come true.

That dream had died with Clem, Gucci reminded herself, pressing her nails (she’d repainted them this morning, and the old Clem would’ve commented on it, even if just to stick up her nose because the color would’ve clashed with _her_ outfit) into her palms until they hurt. She’d mourned Clem alone, wearing black under her usual red pantsuits and silently dedicating a toast of her own to Clem whenever they drank to the fallen, because no one else cared: not any of the Millennium Break rebels each with their own reasons to be anywhere from apathetic to relieved to downright joyful that she was gone, and not any of the self-important leeches at that ridiculous farce of a state funeral. In her bitterest, weakest moments, late at night when there was no one around to perform diplomacy for, Gucci thought that Crysanth’s death was the best possible funerary offering anyone could have given Clem. At least she didn’t have to pretend to grieve for Crysanth, as she would have almost anywhere else on Partizan, even outside Kesh territories, but showing too much sympathy for Clem would’ve been an easy way to erode the support she had been steadily building ever since she arrived on Fort Icebreaker.

And her own position wasn’t nearly as secure as she liked to think, not with Jesset City second-guessing every word she said, and those damn Wolves going on about what Valence and Gur Sevraq would’ve wanted, and even people she’d previously considered loyal listening more closely to the Witch than to her, because the Witch had been able to keep them safe when Gucci couldn’t, when Gucci hadn’t even been in the same city. Or rather, because she hadn’t been in the same city. She’d been in Cruciat, which she’d helped win, so why shouldn’t she be there?

Because it was where Clem would have been. And that was reason enough to stay away.

“You’re right,” said Gucci, returning to the matter at hand instead of her own pointless reflections. “This is fairly substantive.”

“Only fairly?” said the Witch, with a little bit of a smirk, like Clem when she’d won an argument and was just waiting for you to admit it.

“Yes, fine,” said Gucci impatiently. “You’re very impressive.”

“Yes, I am, aren’t I,” said the Witch. “But then, you’re not so bad yourself. For a revolutionary.” The old Clem was only that free with her compliments when she was drunk or wanted something. But the disdain on the word _revolutionary_ , like it was a polite euphemism for a particularly unpleasant swear, that was all Clementine.

So Gucci looked away from the window for the first time, from the flashing explosions painted against the canvas of Girandole, to look at the Witch’s face. Clem’s face, still, even with her eyes concealed by swaths of Russian sage. But Gucci knew her well enough to know that behind the mask, the smile dancing on her lips would reach her eyes too.

“You too,” said Gucci, smiling back. “For a witch.”

“Oh, that’s just… I’m not really a witch, you know?” said Clem. “That’s just what they call me. I mean, I _have_ been chosen by Perennial and she’s bestowed some of her powers on me, but it’s no big deal.”

“Of course not,” Gucci agreed politely, as the leaves and flowers embedded in the walls shivered, bristling up as Clem moved past them, crossing the room to stand beside Gucci. Now when Gucci looked at her, her face lit up by the ominous glow that had changed the color of the planet beyond, the leaves across her eyes casting otherworldly shadows over her cheekbones, she didn’t just see her old friend Clem, or the unknown quantity that was the Witch in Glass. She saw, with a dizzying sensation like looking through the wrong end of a kaleidoscope, the touch of Perennial. For just a moment, she thought she was looking at herself, and she could’ve sworn she felt the scratch of sage against her own skin.

And then she blinked, a chill running down her spine, and she was herself again, and Clem was Clem.

“I knew it,” Clem said triumphantly. “She likes you. Well, of course she does. She had the good sense to choose me, so obviously she would approve of you.” This was such a blisteringly conceited bit of flattery, and she was so confidently un-self-aware about it, that Gucci was startled into laughter, bright and fond. This was Clem, as she had known her, as she had always been, as she always could have become.

“Obviously,” Gucci said, and Clem laughed at that, the sound as clear and familiar as the ringing of a bell.

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write more bickering and less introspection but here we are
> 
> Title from Mirrors by Pvris
> 
> Come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/s_artemisios) where I am often very sad about terrible women


End file.
